Public Attention, Political Action – the Example of Environmental Regulation Jens Newig Institute of Environmental Systems Research, University of Osnabrück accepted for publication in Rationality and Society (Sage Publications) expected to appear in vol. 16 (2004), issue 2 Abstract In this paper, a rational choice model of the dynamics of public attention to politically relevant is- sues is proposed, responding to the following research questions: When and why does public atten- tion arise in the first place? Do “issue attention cycles” really exist? What issues are likely to attain which degree of public attention? How can public attention be measured soundly? In which way does public attention influence regulatory action, and how, in turn, is public attention affected by political action? To this end, the paper sets off with a discussion of the concepts of “public”, “issue”, “attention” and “cycle”. Key variables of the causal model include the acuteness/severity and acces- sibility/visibility of the issue at stake as well as the ability to “solve” the underlying problem. In an empirical study, several environmental issues and their corresponding regulation in Germany are examined in order to test the theoretical conjectures which could, for the most part, be empirically supported. Structure of the article 1 Introduction 2 Some basic concepts 2.1 “Attention” – public attention vs. public opinion 2.2 “Public” – the public vs. the political sphere 2.3 “Issues” – finding the right analytical scale 2.4 “Cycle” – the cyclical behaviour of issue-attention 2.5 Measuring public attention 3 An actor-based model 3.1 Theoretical assumptions 3.2 Two existing approaches to a causal explanation of public attention 3.3 Self-organization model 4 Case studies 4.1 “Waldsterben”, Acid Rain and Sulphur Emissions 4.2 Summer Smog 4.3 BSE 5 Testing the hypotheses 6 Concluding remarks and suggestions for further research